Bay Area youngster Samuel
Sevian broke the record for the youngest USCF master ever! He did it in 9
years, 11 months and 23 days, which beats Nicholas Nip's previous
record by 3 days. A quad at the historic Mechanics Institute in San Francisco put Samuel peak rating at 2201. See Samuel's full USCF tournament history here. Update: The previous version of this article reported that Sevian broke the record 8 days earlier, but a World Youth re-rate that put Samuel under 2200. Since then, Samuel has continued to play and has a published rating of 2206 on the February 2011 rating list. Sevian's youngest-ever master record is now official for 9 years, 11 months and 23 days, which beats Nicholas Nip's record by three days.

Samuel's advice for aspiring youngsters is to be critical to your own weaknesses as a chessplayer. He also recommends playing up in section tournaments and solving plenty of studies, compositions and tactics.